Dead Frontier/Issue 17

“Come on, this way!” Gord shouts, grabbing Adam by the arm and pulling him in the opposite direction. They sprint away from the wall of infected, but the dead plow towards them at an unusually fast pace.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Adam mutters as he runs for his life. He begins to sweat, more from fear rather than exhaustion.

“Run faster, man!” Gord is a few feet ahead of him now, and Adam picks up speed. He makes the decision to look back at the infected, but he regrets it instantly. There’s more than he thought--close to about a hundred walking corpses--and he forces his legs to move faster. He finally catches up to Gord and they cut into a narrow alley. Hopefully the infected won’t be able to squeeze through the alleyway due to their large numbers.

Adam and Gord speed through the alley and emerge on an empty street. Adam stops and breathes a sigh of relief. “The hell are you doing?” Gord asks. “You better move your ass!” He darts ahead in the direction of the highway, and Adam follows until they reach the car.

Once they finally see the car, they jump in, both of them breathing heavily. Gord smashes the gas pedal and speeds back to the motel.

Hannah saunters around the perimeter of the large parking lot, melancholy and lost in her thoughts, when she hears footsteps behind her. She turns and sees her father. He scratches his snow-white beard and matches her stride. “Do you feel okay?” Mick asks after a while.

Hannah sighs. “No, Dad. Cole’s dead, so I’m not really in the best mood.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. I was just asking.” There is a long pause before Mick decides to speak again. “Look, Hannah. I know whatever you and Cole had was...complicated. But you and I both know he broke your heart. He wasn’t a good guy.”

Hannah stops and turns to her father, scowling at him. “So...what? Are you saying I shouldn’t mourn his death? I spent five years of my life with him, and you want me to act like...like I don’t miss him? You're crazy.” She storms away, but her father grabs her shoulder, making her face him.

“I know you’re not a child anymore, but I’m your father; do not disrespect me by walking away like that.” He waits while Hannah rolls her eyes, and then continues. “What I’m saying is we have bigger problems to deal with now, like where we’ll get our next meal, or how long it’ll be until your mother’s medicine runs out.” Just yesterday he counted Wanda’s nitroglycerin pills--the ones she takes for her bad arteries--and estimated she has enough left for a month. “You need to come back to reality for a moment and realize this is how the world is now: no one is safe anymore. You can’t spend all of your time grieving, especially for some guy that didn’t even care about you.”

Hannah is on the verge of tears when she says: “So if something were to happen to me or mom, you wouldn’t mourn us? Because that’s basically what you’re saying.”

Mick sighs, frustrated. “That’s different.”

“No, it’s not different! Jesus Christ, Dad, you’re such an asshole.” She stomps away from him, furious and annoyed. She wipes a lone tear from her cheek. Cole wasn’t a bad guy in her eyes. Although he did cheat, he apologized for weeks afterwards until she wouldn’t even answer his calls anymore. Still, she regrets the hurtful things she said that night--loser, good for nothing, better off dead. She even escalated to saying his deceased mother wouldn’t even be proud of him. And that was when he stormed out and whatever relationship they had formed over those five years changed for the worst.

A few hours after dining on raw beans with the Evans family, Cole lies on the couch, staring mindlessly at the blank wall in front of him. He is exhausted and would love to sleep, but his morbid imagination prevents him from doing so; he thinks about the likely possibility that everyone--Hannah, Dwight, Mercer, and the others--is dead. Or infected. Maybe the infected are even devouring their flesh at this very moment.

He wants to hope that they're okay, that by some miracle everyone made it back to the motel, but he knows it's stupid to think that way. What's the point in hoping for the best anymore, anyway?

Billie takes a seat at the other side of the couch, but Cole continues to stare at the wall. Billie clears her throat before she speaks. "How's your leg?"

"Fine," he says.

"You think you'll be ready to leave tomorrow? To head back to the motel?"

"Sure."

Billie sighs, annoyed with his monosyllabic answers. "I thought you'd be more excited now that you're not dead," she spits at him.

He removes his stare from the wall and instead glares at her. "You expect me to be happy right now? Yes, these amazing people fed us and fixed my leg, but has it crossed your mind that Dwight, Mercer, and everyone else could be dead? Or a fucking walking corpse?"

"Of course it's cross my mind! Maybe I just don't want to think about it because I'd rather not spend every waking second depressed and angry because my friends are dead." She takes a deep breath to compose herself. She makes a note to herself to try and control these angry outbursts. "Sorry. I know you don't feel good. I shouldn't've exploded like that."

"I just want to be left alone for a while."

"Y-yeah, of course," she says, getting up from the couch. She walks to the kitchen and sits on the counter, leaning her head against one of the cabinets. She closes her eyes for a bit until footsteps can be heard coming down the steps. A few seconds later, Luke emerges in the kitchen doorway.

"Everything okay down here?" Luke asks, still lurking in the doorway.

"You heard that? Sorry," Billie says.

"No, it's fine." He walks towards the counter and takes a seat next to her. "Boyfriend troubles. I get it."

Billie scoffs. "Boyfriend? He's like, 6 years older than me. No offense to Cole, but no thanks."

"Damn. That's harsh."

"That made me sound like a bitch, didn't it?" She laughs. "He's just not my type is all."

"Then what is--" Luke is cut off by his father's shouts from the house's porch.

"What the hell?" Luke says, scrambling out of the kitchen for his gun, Billie following behind him. "We've never had infected around here."

"Really? Hey, where's my shotgun?" Billie says. Luke reaches into a hallway closet and retrieves her gun, handing it to her. He grabs his Beretta, and slams the door shut. He immediately runs to the front door, explaining to Billie on the way.

"Nah, we don't see any around here. Me and my dad have seen a bunch going on runs, but out here? Never. How good are you with that gun?"

"Pretty good, I think." They both burst onto the porch and see about 30 to 40 infected roaming around the acre of grass in front of the Evans' house. Billie begins to walk down the steps, ready to get rid of the pesky infected, but Luke grabs her shoulder. "What are you doing? You can't just run up to them."

"I've found they're easier to hit when you get up close and personal." She aims at an infected and the power of the gun jolts her back slightly. She continues to walk forward, blowing out the brains of the infected, and reloading when needed. To her surprise, seeing the dead's heads explode is actually a decent form of therapy; she can feel her pent up anger slowly slip away each time she pulls the trigger.

Adam and Gord pull into the parking lot. Melody hears the car and rushes outside, but halts when she only sees two men. "Where's Dommy?" she asks.

"It's a shame. He didn't make it," Gord says.

"What? Adam, what happened?"

Gord glares at Adam, daring him to say the wrong thing. "He turned while we were heading to his house," Adam lies. Gord nods, informing Adam that he made the right decision about not revealing truth of Dommy's death.

“His family. Are they okay?”

“We don’t know. We never made it to his house.” Adam can feel the perspiration popping up on his forehead.”

“I-I have to tell everyone,” Melody says. She scurries away, knocking on motel room doors. Gord grabs Adam by the shoulder and pulls him to the side.